Braun (key study) (memory) (experiment 1)

Question 1

What was the background?

Answer 1

Braun thought that nostalgic adverts acted as a cue for memories of past events, even altering what people remember.

Question 2

What was the aim?

Answer 2

To see if autobiographically-focused advertising could directly affect how consumers remember a childhood experience.

Question 3

What were the hypotheses?

Answer 3

• If the advertisement is part of how the consumers memory is reconstructed, then elements or images of the advertisement may appear as part of the consumer’s reconstructed memory, regardless of whether the events actually happened.
• If the advertisement causes the consumer to visualise their childhood memory, then the process of imagining the memory will lead consumers to believe that the things shown in the advertisement happened to them.

Question 4

What was the design?

Answer 4

• Lab experiment
• Independent measures design

Question 5

How was data collected? (What type of data was collected)

Answer 5

• Collected using questionnaires and self report
• Qualitative and quantitative

Question 6

What is autobiographical advertising?

Answer 6

Adverts that are intended to bring back people’s memories of their past to influence how they feel about the product that is being advertised.

Question 7

What was the independent variable?

Answer 7

Whether the participants were shown the Disney advert or the control advert

Question 8

What was the sample?

Answer 8

• 107 undergraduates (64f 43m)
• From a Midwestern university in the USA

Question 9

What were the materials?

Answer 9

• A questionnaire containing 20 childhood events (life events inventory). “shook hands with a favourite TV character at a theme resort” was 4th on the list
• Disney advert
• A questionnaire rating the advert using attitude scales (favourable/unfavourable)
• A questionnaire rating on a scale of 0 (disagree) to 100 (agree) how involved they felt in the ads using empathy measures. (EG: “I got really involved in the feelings provoked by the ad)
• 2 distraction tasks
• Questionnaire about their personal memories of Disney

Question 10

How long did the procedure last?

Answer 10

2

Question 11

What was the first week of the procedure?

Answer 11

• Participants were randomly assigned to either the Disney (experimental) or non-disney (control) advert.
• Participants were given the life events inventory questionnaire
• Participants were given random experimental tasks to reduce demand characteristics.
• Participants were asked to return the following week.

Question 12

What was the second week of the procedure?

Answer 12

• Participants were given either the Disney or control advert.
• Participants were asked to try to visualise the advert and imagine themselves experiencing the situation.
• They were given 5 minutes to write down what the video made them feel and what it made them think about.
• The participants then rated the advert on the attitude and empathy scales.
• They were then given a fifteen minute distraction task.
• Participants were then asked if they had ever visited Disney world; and if so, to describe their visit. They were also asked how well they remembered their event on a scale of 1 (not at all) to 7 (perfectly).
• Finally, participants were asked what they thought the aim of the experiment was, to test for demand characteristics. They were also asked if they thought that their memories of Disney had been altered by the advert.

Question 13

How were the qualitative results measured?

Answer 13

• The participants reactions to the adverts and their statements recalling their personal experiences were rated by 2 independent judges who did not know what the alternative hypothesis was so that their ratings were unbiased.
• The inter-rater reliability of these judges was 0.83, meaning that their ratings were similar.

Question 14

What were the autobiographical effects of the advertising?

Answer 14

• Significantly more participants in the experimental group showed an increase in their score on the life events inventory question: “met and shook hands with a character at a theme resort” in week 2. (90% Vs 47%)
• The Disney group were much more confident in their memory of events.
• There were no other significant differences across the rest of the questionnaire.

Question 15

What were the effects on memory of Disney?

Answer 15

• Out of those who had visited a Disney park, the experimental group had more positive thoughts than the control group.
• More elements of the advert were used by the experimental group, such as words like “magical”.

Question 16

What were the effects on demand characteristics?

Answer 16

• The experimenters asked the participants to guess what the aim of the experiment was.
• Nobody could correctly guess what the aim was, therefore they found no demand characteristics.